Whooping crane case off to fast start

On Monday morning, U.S. District Judge Janis Jack heard opening arguments in the whooping crane lawsuit in Corpus Christi. The legal conflict is about whether Texas is doing enough to make sure that sufficient fresh water is getting to the bays and estuaries where the endangered bird lives during the winters. The lawsuit could change water allocations along the San Antonio and Guadalupe rivers and directly impact San Antonio. See this story from Sunday.

The trial is scheduled to last two weeks, but before the plaintiffs and defendants were even finished with the first witness, Jack cut straight to the center of the case and asked whether biologist Tom Stehn was going to testify.

For more than two decades Stehn has been the lead biologist for studying the cranes at their wintering grounds near the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, not only for the U.S. government but Canada as well. Canada cares because the birds summer in Northern Alberta.

Based on his field observations Stehn has concluded in several reports that the health of the birds during the winter is tied directly to the fresh-water inflows.

He argues in times of droughts the birds have to fly farther for fresh water, and there are fewer blue crabs for them to eat because of the higher salinity of the water. This added stress and reduced food supply leads to increase mortality, his argument goes. Under the Endangered Species Act, the state can’t do something that it knows will kill or harm the cranes.

Both sides wanted to have Stehn testify, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does not allow its employees to do so.

Jack asked whether he had been subpoenaed.

Both sides said no, citing the position of the USFWS. The judge did not seem impressed and gave the lawyers the hour-long lunch break to do so.

Stehn lives a short drive from the courthouse, and he could be in there by this afternoon.

Neither side planned for this. It could change everything in the trial.